


Beaten, Boiled, Bedeviled

by ERNest



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Season: Marielda, Secrets, The Heat and the Dark, Trauma, violence implied but not described in detail
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-17 19:14:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16980216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ERNest/pseuds/ERNest
Summary: He wants there to be at least one of them who doesn’t have to worry about the cosmic significance of what they’re doing.





	Beaten, Boiled, Bedeviled

     Being the younger twin means being the test subject for any number of pranks – Ethan was the first person to lie to him, but it also means that someone will always be there to look after you – Ethan was the first person to lie to him. They taught each other how to lie and how to know if someone is lying, and from those skills they shaped the world to have a place for them. Those tricks don’t work on each other, why should they? They’re a _team_ , distinct people but part of the same thing, and maybe they don’t tell each other every single thing, but they’d never think to actively keep stuff from each other.

     Edmund lies in bed unable to muster the will to even sit up, and he doesn’t tell his brother about the Heat and the Dark. It’s not that he doesn’t trust him – Ethan would probably figure out better than him what should be done – but it’s impossible to dig up the words for how it felt to touch those possible futures. And even if he managed to express that terror, Ethan would still only get a shadow of what it’s like. You have to have been there.

     And he wants there to be at least one of them who doesn’t have to worry about the cosmic significance of what they’re doing. It’s a relief to hear his brother place bets outside his door – even if the stakes involve his own health. While it’s not quite enough to get him out of bed, the idea that he’s indirectly losing his brother money makes him chuckle. He still feels too soft and tender, but he trusts he’ll be back on his feet soon. Or perhaps he only hopes.

     Edmund should tell his brother about taking the map to the tea witches, he really really should. This belongs to _both_  of them, a birthright and a history they don’t have to invent. They’ve compared notes about everything else, so why not this? Even if they don’t go to Coral’s house together, Ethan should know that progress is being made. But something about the brand of magic, especially when he gets so much grief about the terror of ghosts that _Ethan_  put into him, makes Edmund keep his own counsel. There’s no way to make this into some noble urge to protect a person who’s always protected him; it’s just something he’s decided not to share.

     He tells his twin about it after the fact, emphasizes all the reasons Snitch Nightly was the exact wrong person to accompany him on this task, and glosses over the vision that came to him when he drank his mother’s map. To explain that, he’d have to talk about the ones that came for him in the rectory and all through that nightmare of a University, and to do _that_  he’d have to tell Ethan about the Heat and the Dark, which he still can’t bring himself to do. Plus, the girl who was visiting the house seems _so_  familiar and until he can place her he thinks he’ll keep the secret of her for a while longer. So instead, pretending it’s the easier option, he says “You know that priest who beat me up in a darkened operating theater?” and they go forward from there.

     Visions concealed compound one another. He doesn’t go looking for them and in fact would much prefer to lose himself in socializing as his colleagues think he’s doing, or even in the hunt for the map as his brother thinks, but dreams and their afterimages continue to find him. And one night he finds out from Samothes Himself the nature of their next heist. Morally, it’s hard to say what should be done, but temporally it looks like they already have, somewhere in the future, because Samothes _knows_  they’re on their way.

     Ethan still thinks they’re spending the Day of High Sun as treasure hunters, and that at the end of it all they’ll come home bearing a Grand Prize. Edmund knows better but wishes he didn’t, and envies his brother’s… well, innocence would be the wrong word, they _are_ all scoundrels… but his straightforward understanding of their place in all this. Castille seems certain of her path, but that’s because of Charter, and everyone else wavers, so there’s no one against whose steps he can measure his own.


End file.
